For decades, before a heedless congregation, some of us have preached the old Hamiltonian gospel. Great nations do not have trade partners. They have trade competitors and rivals. Trade surpluses are superior to trade deficits. Tariffs on foreign goods are preferable to taxes on U.S. producers. Manufacturing, not finance, is the muscle of the nation. Economic independence is vital to political … [Read More]

The election of Illinois senator Barack Obama (D) to the presidency confirms a simple truth: when the economy goes into a recession during the last two years of a presidential term, the party in the White House is replaced. That’s an adage I learned several years ago from the astute Indiana economist Bill Styring, and it has proven true over the … [Read More]

When I point out to my conservative friends that in terms of federal spending and exploding deficits, Reagan’s limited government rhetoric didn’t always match reality, they are offended that I would dare question the Republican messiah. Likewise, conservatives can take solace in the fact that the right-wing nightmares and left-wing dreams induced by the new Democratic messiah won’t amount to much … [Read More]

The tradition of thought with which George Kennan (1904-2005) is most often identified is that of political realism. That tradition appears to most Americans to be rather foreign, incompatible with new world enlightenment and morality. To them, diplomacy is morality as it applies to relations between states and to human conduct around the globe. The guiding principle of American foreign policy … [Read More]

Nice guys finish last. Real conservatives don’t even finish third. That’s the sad takeaway from the longest yet least eventful presidential campaign in American history. While the mainstream right continues its weeping and gnashing of teeth over John McCain’s loss, conservatives who prefer stronger stuff should be more disappointed by the third-party vote totals this year. Both the Libertarian Party and … [Read More]

Why did John McCain lose? Let’s start with those “headwinds” into which he was flying. The president of the United States, the leader of his party, was at Nixon-Carter levels of approval, 25 percent, going into Election Day. Sixty-two percent of the nation thought the economy was the No. 1 issue, and 93 percent thought the economy was bad. Two-thirds of … [Read More]

Professional comics have an old saw that says, “Never go on after a kid or an animal.” But this week I have no choice. America’s hog and pony show dragged on for more than a year, and we’ll be scooping up the steaming piles it left behind for decades. The cleanup won’t be over till the last Supreme Court Justice appointed … [Read More]

NEW YORK—Back in the summer of 1960, a married Hollywood actress and her friend, a Hollywood wife, came to the south of France and met a randy 23-year-old who showed them around the place. The actress was the sexy Janet Leigh, then married to Tony Curtis, and her beautiful friend was Jean Martin, whose hubby was Dean Martin, while the randy … [Read More]

As Tom Piatak discusses over at Chronicles, David Frum hastened to the defense of his fellow-neocon Anne Applebaum, the historian of the Soviet gulags and the current wife of the current Polish foreign minister. It seems that NR dared to rebuke this lady for her enthusiastic backing of Obama. Frum complained about “how the house of conservatism has shrunk” if it … [Read More]

Even before Obama won a resounding victory over McCain and Democratic majorities expanded significantly in Congress, declarations that conservatism was finished had been pouring in from the left as they had in 1976 and 1992. The decimation of the Republican Party over the last two election cycles has left the vehicle for conventional conservative political action horribly damaged, broken and smoldering … [Read More]